Principal Software Engineer

Overview

Would you like to join a team delivering innovative software that powers millions of Microsoft Azure servers around the world? The Azure Compute Node Services Group manages the lifecycle and operations for Azure servers and virtual machines.

As a Principal Software Engineer in the team, you will join a global network of leaders working on building and supporting workflows for Azure servers. This will require working on both Windows and Linux, in addition to developing software in Rust for Azure Boost. You will lead the development of software that achieves best in class performance, reliability, security, availability, serviceability and supportability.

This opportunity will allow you to accelerate your career growth and learning while working with a community of experienced and energized leaders. While the majority of the team will be based in Redmond, this is a flexible work opportunity, and you may be able to have a completely remote working environment.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

• Mentor and develop engineers at all levels through knowledge sharing and continuous learning. Serve as a role model for an open, honest, and inclusive approach to problem-solving.
• Acts as an expert for Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) and monitors other engineers across product lines, working on call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions.
• Seeks new knowledge and adapts to emerging trends, technical solutions, and patterns to enhance the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products. Also promotes consistency in monitoring and operations at scale and shares knowledge with other engineers.
• Leads efforts on using debugging tools, tests, logs, telemetry, and other methods, and proactively leads verification of assumptions while developing code before issues occur across products in production. Leverages minimal telemetry data, triangulates issues, and resolves with minimal iterations. Leads incident retrospectives to identify root causes of problems, the implementation of repair actions, and the identification of mechanisms to prevent incident recurrence. Proactively applies least-access principles, uses logging, telemetry, and other appropriate mechanisms to investigate issues while retaining privacy and security, and drives those practices across the team.
• Applies and identifies best practices and shares information with other engineers for building code based on well-established methods and secure design principles while also applying best practices for new code development and formal validation of security invariants. Leads product development and scaling to customer requirements and applies best practices for meeting scaling needs and performance expectations and security promises.
• Collaborates with partner teams to ensure a set of products work well with the components of the partner team, ensuring proper end-to-end testing, live-site coverage, scalability, performance, and DRI escalation pathways are established before going live.
• Considers and leads the identification of requirements for, and the comprehensive application of automation within production and deployment across products, targeting zero-touch deployment when possible. Runs code in simulated or other non-production environments to confirm functionality and error-free runtime across products.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or related technical discipline AND technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to C, C++, or Rust OR equivalent experience.
• Experience in technical design, problem-solving, and debugging applications in Linux and/or Windows.
• Experience with architecting large system and seeing them to production.

Other Requirements: 

• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:  
  • Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter. 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior experience in Linux/Windows OS internals, Kernel development is a plus.
• Experience with RUST is a plus.
• Experience in large scale system architecture, design, development, testing, and release, including but not limited to Cloud Infrastructure, system level application design and development, performance tuning, telemetry design and analysis.
• Proficient analytical skills with systematic and structured approaches to software design.

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

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Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.